Dell'Oscuro e dell'Amore
by TRGG
Summary: About the Dark (Lord) and Love" As JK said, the Dark Lord neither loved nor cared in his whole life, but this doesn't mean that there haven't been love in his life. And love, like every human feeling, has more that one shade. TomRiddleGReatGroup's first P
1. 00 Preface

Why the Dark Lord? Why, among the many characters created by J.K. Rowling, have we chosen Tom Riddle? Simple, we love him. Every of us catch a different shade of him, a hidden facet and we try to communicate it to who surrounds us: there is who sees a cruel wizard and there is who sees a tormented man. Inside him, man and wizard face each other and fight, even if the latter seems to win. But is it so? We don't know much about him, little about his infancy and boyhood, much about his rise and decline. But he is described through his enemies' eyes, barring us the chance to investigate in the wizard's obscurity to search the man: a character, to my personal judgment, with a potential and a psychological thickness that goes beyond the "cruel, evil and feared You-Know-Who" and that's why he doesn't get the interest he deserves.

Even human feelings have different shades, and surely love isn't an exception. Often we call love one of its shades. but there is a love pure with innocence and the sick one that finds satisfaction in the destruction of the object, the devotion and even if it is said that love is blind, with its help we can see what the others don't. there is even the love of a mother, whishing every blessing and ready to every sacrifice. the filial love, spontaneous and naïve.

At first, the words Voldemort and Love would sound like an oxymoron, but it isn't so and this is our project's purpose: compare man and wizard with this feeling and try to understand in which way and in which measure love has influenced his life. because this will also be a journey through time, from the first instants to before the final battle.

Why love or not-love the Dark Lord? We'll answer this question with the tales you are about to read and we'll try to be convincing, hoping to teach you to love him.

To Mrs. Black, our Founder, with the wish to find her deserved happiness.__


	2. 01 Lullaby

**Lullaby**

**_- Herentas Meridiæ-_**

_Nia, nia, nia_

_oles e mane exù pedìa_

_pedìa ce kiatere_

_telun' dota ciarma mene_

_Nana, nana, nana_

_dekatrìa na kami e mana_

_dekatrì massarie_

_ce to diome mian jana_

Nedda, nedda, nedda 

_senza mai mu pai junnedda_

_mo léone e kristian_

_tì senza mai mu pai junn_

_Na, na, na_

_ce o pedìmmu mu pet_

_ce pai panu panu_

_ma'a puddhìa ta peten_

_pai panu's tin anghéra_

_m'a puddhia tis primavera_

It's hard to keep long notes. my child presses on my diaphragm and I'm unable to take enough breath. But it doesn't matter because he -or she- seems to have liked my lullaby: I can feel that little heart beat under my fingers. I can feel my child moving inside me as to show his -or her- love for me, the thankfulness for his -or her- upcoming birth. slightly pointing my tiptoes on the grass, my rocking chair lulls me and I look at the sky of this late May day, so bright and beautiful, surrounded by my roses. I smile to my thoughts and hopes of motherhood.

Will I be able to raise a child? I'm only twenty-two and I don't have experience with children. I have my friend, she knows what to do, but what will I do when she won't be able to help me? These doubts bother me since I had found out that I was with child. I am a fool, am I not? Mammà says that I'm only anxious and that I just need to learn, exactly as in everything else.

I am sure about one thing: the life of my son -or daughter- will be different from mine. I have had the better bites of my father's table, I have been pampered and fondled by nurses and nannies and I have had the best of what gold could purchase. My child, instead, won't have all this: my husband's pay allows us to live in an honorable way with very little surplus. Yet my child will have something that I haven't had: two caring parents that will love him -or her- dearly. I love him -or her- already, I have loved him -or her- since the first instant, since the first time I felt him -or her- move in my womb. Since the first time I have shared a dream with him -or her.

And he -or she- will be great. I don't know if among my husband's people or mine, but my child will be great. I feel that my child will be very handsome -or beautiful, a perfect harmony between my husband and I. I hope my child has his eyes, they are of a green so rare and beautiful! And surely he -or she- will have my family's infamous birthmark, in the same place where mine is. I wonder what my husband will think when he will see it. Probably that I haven't had enough strawberry pastries. Everybody will fall in love with him -or she: my child will have my family's mysterious charm and my husband's quiet beauty. His impulsiveness and my rigor. his cleverness and my intuition. The calm and the passionate nature we share, my child will be perfection.

My child will attend my same school (there is no doubt about it) and will have an enviable career: model student, Prefect and in his –or her- last year Head Boy -or Girl. But I'll let him -or her- to chose his -or her- future and my husband and me will always be at his -or her- side with our love and our support. But whatever will be the chosen path, my child will be great. Who knows, perhaps he -or she- will be the next Minister of Magic or Hogwarts's Headmaster -or Headmistress. Or he -or she- will follow my famous ancestor's footsteps and become one of the most powerful wizards -or witches- of the century: a man -or a woman- to look at with admiration and take as example. Or he -or she- could simply follow my husband's footstep and become the best lawyer in England.

My child kicks, as if to tell me something: I kiss my fingertips and graze my womb, full of life and hopes, with a loving smile on my lips. My child will be born within a month or so, and that day I... I will tell everything to my husband. It wouldn't be fair to rise this creature in lie: my child have to grow up knowing to have a Muggle as father and a witch as mother. I feel something grips my heart, like an omen: what if Tom won't accept us for what we are? If he asks me, I would be ready to give up my magical nature to continue to have at my side the two people I love more than myself, my child and my husband. And what if, known the truth, he leaves me? What if his love wouldn't be enough? I would have to raise this child alone, with no one to help me... my child kicks again and I hear my stomach grumble.

"Someone is hungry: aren't we, mummy's darling?"

Leaning on my rocking chair's arms I get up and go in the kitchen for a little snack: my child moves, as if the promise of food cheers him -or her. I smile to myself as the water flows on my hands and onto the fruit: it doesn't matter what will happen and it doesn't matter what the future has in store for us, the life of my child will be full of love.

_ traditional lullaby_


	3. 02 Pietas

**.Pietas.**

_- Nimue -_

The angels, guarding the heavy door's sides of the Holy Virgin's Chapel, were horrendous; more the child stared at them and more in his head grew stronger the conviction that those grinning creatures, placed on white marble pillars, they had nothing to share with the celestial world, which Father Harold called "The Heaven."

They were statues of cold stone, barely damaged by the earthquake that had shaken the town five years before, the same year he had born, the child remembered, but he focused on the folds on those wide, chanting mouths' sides, anything but divine, and they seemed to him a couple of little boys, like him, fatter and with a light veil placed on the "front bottom," as Sister Angela called it, but they were two children, brawny, wrinkly like old men and soulless, they were repugnant and monstrous.

Thomas turned around, he felt those sculptural jokes' lethargic glance, but the cheerful shouts of his mates, assembled in the courtyard, distracted him: some of them skipped around in circle, holding hands, other ran as if the Devil was hot on their heels, and they laughed, perhaps they didn't understand to have been refused by their parents, to tread the ground earthling because their mothers hadn't had the courage to strangle them and they had ended in a cage, exposed for the hypocrites visiting they.

They were objects of pity, and Thomas hated it, because something in his soul screamed, it kicked to show him his strength, his superiority, even to Father Harold and his words, even to the monsters spying him from their columns.

The angels, Thomas said to himself, were soft, fair, and delicate like the flowers trampled by his mates, like his mother, who had become one of those sweet creatures, whose singing gave peace and wonderful dream to the livings.

Katlin had went inside with the excuse to need the bathroom, but she had seen Riddle at the window, her gang of friends considered him mad, they said he spoke with his mother, dead childbirth, that he sing-sung unknown and hissing words, that his nature was evil, and so they tried to subject him, but since Thomas was cruel, he had never bent.

One evening Anthony, the stronger among the twelve, he had dragged him out of bed, in the dark he had hit him with a bar of washing soap, stolen to Sister Cecilia, on his thin and tense belly and indecent parts.

"An other blow and he would have ended in your dorm, Kitty," he had laughed in the morning.

Katlin had snorted. "You Know what joy go in isolation cell because you like to hit where... good Christians don't!"

"Yes, but he had liked it, because he not even screamed. Silent, like a statue. It's becoming boring, because he doesn't rebel or cry; he stays still, like a rag doll. You know, I think he is a freak." Anthony had replied.

It was bizarre that Thomas didn't give in, not even when they had made him taste the dirty pants of Giles, who although was quite feminine and well mannered, he used to do a lake of pee every night.

Anthony and Fred had heard Giles's whining, so they had told him to stand up and finish and then to give them his pants.

"Why?" Giles had asked.

"A price to pay, Giles, tomorrow morning, Brother Karl will notice your dry mattress and won't make you clean our dorm." had said Fred.

Thomas found with his nose covered, not even one as evil as him seemed to last much without air, he opened his mouth, that dripping cloth soaked with piss had entered in his palate.

The two braves adventurers had received a thin satisfaction, for such achievement: Thomas merely had stared at the window; while a honeyed ray struck his reddened face, dirty with urine and saliva.

"Phew... he should have tossed a bit. In sign of respect." had mumbled Fred. "The fact is, even a freak like Riddle won't drink Giles's piss, will him?"

"I hope so." Kitty had ended.

Thomas just rinsed his mouth and washed carefully his teeth, in the morning.

The boys had tried quite everything, risking Father Harold's "Turn of Rosary", but Riddle was irremovable from his cruel muteness.

"He never sings." Once said Sister Marie, who liked order during the Mass.

Kitty wasn't able to analyze Thomas, he was so distant from her and the twelve, unable to enjoy or suffer, and once she has wondered about the origin of Riddle, who seemed to have a father, since he bestowed an annual donation to the religious college and Brother Benvolio recorded it with joy, greeting Mr. Riddle in a living room where had admitted one child's future parents.

However, Riddle didn't want Thomas with him, and if Sister Rita was right when she said that a man wasn't suitable to educate a child, then Mr. Riddle money could be used to hire a nanny to educate his son as a good Christian.

Brother Benvolio's register didn't count many donations from relatives, which meant that Mr. Riddle was really enthusiastic to get rid of his son, and the reason was one: Thomas was a freak.

Kitty a tiny hand in her black curls, her tail had loosened during the afternoon plays, but she knew the rules and if she had gone in Refectory with loose hair she would receive three blows of rod.

"Hi, Thomas, are you here to confess yourself?" she asked with indifference, approaching him with caution.

Katlin was like a feline: thin, quick and precise in her graced movements, delicious mannered like a kitten with nuns and priests, but she knew well how scratch, deceive and excel above the boys' group at her orders.

She was nice, loved by Sister Rita, Brother Karl and father Harold, his voice pleased Sister Marie, Kitty was a pimp, she was it for necessity, to survival, to risk as it was enough to show her friends was able to purr if only rewarded, because it was her nature to want it, Katlin had never worried about it.

Not at six years.

"Yes. Father Harold has ordered me to come." Thomas replied, almost annoyed.

"Father Harold Father confess us on Friday, not Tuesday." Kitty replied.

"I can't do anything." Thomas then said.

Kitty folded her arms. "Yes, you can: go in, say four things to Father Harold and go out." She replied insisting.

"Father Harold asks more. He wants that I forgive my dad." Tom admitted, and he didn't stare at her, he raised his green eyes on the two angels.

"Say that you forgive him..."

The silence that followed her declaration paralyzed Kitty, an unknown fear, deeper and distressing than to be whipped with a rosary or beaten, it was terror, the one you feel before a demon.

Thomas's eyes turned in a dark colour, aching like blood spilling from a wound, Kitty jumped back.

"Should I forgive the monster that has killed my mum?" he screamed with such vehemence that even the statues seemed to stir, repeating that angry accusation.

Katlin took off that deafening rumble from her head and stammered "No... you have to... the priest to believe it." she explained hesitantly.

Thomas gave her his shoulders. "Never, not even if it is a lie! I hate that monster, I will kill him and I will see the true angels, not these repugnant pieces of stone!" he answered back breathlessly.

Sister Rita closed the entrance door with a thud, Kitty had gotten out the park, but she had noticed that the girl didn't wanted to go in the bathroom, but only to talk with young Riddle.

It was sad to know that a generous man like Mr. Riddle has had a heir contaminated by the Demon, but it couldn't have been otherwise, being him the son of a Devil's slave, cruel and deceiving.

Good Thomas Riddle wanted Tom to stay among those holy boundaries, he perhaps hoped without light, yet Sister Rita didn't want to disappoint him and she heartened him, assuring him that Tom would have been taken care of and he was.

"Thomas, how could you talk in this way before a sacred place and deny the angels' glory?" she inquired fiercely, avoiding Kitty and staring at the boy.

She was a tall woman, thin, she forced her body to deprive of food, she wanted her eyes to burn for long hours of vigil spent praying, she implored the divine mercy, the coming of Judgment and Eternal Life, she asked to God to receive all her orphans, even Thomas, to embrace them and give them love and mercy.

Mercy drove her hand, with hooked, bony fingers, on Thomas's mouth.

Kitty felt a sharp pain in her heart: she was a traitor!

It didn't matter if she commissioned Anthony and Fred's capers or if she thought Thomas was a freak, the first and inviolable rule of the college was to not jeopardize a mate in front of a black skirt.

She was shattered by her own stupidity and she only wanted to get Thomas out of trouble, for her own conscience, for the loyalty that don't have to be broken among mates.

She ran outside, she knew that Thomas would never retracted his affirmation about those blocks of stone, that he would say to Sister Rita he hated his father, so she called Fred.

"Kitty, do you have seen Sister Cecilia get undressed?" the boy snickered.

"No... I have get Riddle in trouble with Sister Rita." muttered Kitty.

Fred ran a hand through his ambered hair. "Oh Heaven! How have you...?

Do you need some?

You know well it's your fault, Kitty; these rules are more sacred than Father Harold's nonsense. Phew... your dorm mates will kill you!" Fred said.

They hear a snap, powerful, sadistic: Sister Rita's Rosary on Thomas's mouth.

"My fault!" Kitty cried.

"Yes, Kitty." said Fred severely.

The girl drew near the door; there was a strange silence, a low weeping, and a choked prayer.

Kitty pushed the door; it had never seemed so heavy.

She saw two figures, wrapped in the black imposed to each good Christian.

One was standing stiffly; the latter was kneeling on the ground, with joined hands.

Kitty swallowed, walking forward with small footsteps, afraid.

"Miserere nobis, mercy. Miserere nobis!" sing-sung the voice.

It was a splendid but spine-chilling image like an Apocalypse's representations: Thomas M. Riddle was stained with the blood spilling from his chin, to his pinafore, Sister Rita was on ground, her white Rosary, dirtied with blood turned toward the stony angels.

She was sobbing "Mercy" and broken words.

Kitty didn't understand the reason of it, until she didn't notice water on the floor, two small wet spots. She raised her eyes, those orbits open wide, of cold stone, were full of tear. The tear of a hopeless child.

"They are angels' tears!" Katlin screamed.

Thomas sneered sarcastically and didn't utter a word, in a way, it was true, but the only Angel that could cry for him was his mother.


	4. 03 The Respect

_Author and Translator's Note:__ more than often, doubts had worried Nimue as she wrote this piece, just like they did as I translated it. We know that some readers may feel offended by Malfoy and Black's statements, and they have a right to complain about it: that is why we are asking you to have a purely historical approach to this story, because those were times when people thought that such mean beliefs were true and even tried to demonstrate them._

The Respect

_- Nimue -_

**T**he silvery blade sank in the underdone steak and the boy lazily chewed the bit.

"We are regressing," suddenly exclaimed Ares Ludwig Malfoy with his icy and severe voice, "we'll be forced to share even the air with vile creatures… beings that should polish our shoes, not aspire to steal them before the whole world."

Thomas M. Riddle didn't cared of that authoritative manifesto; every day there was a new reason to restrict the number of elects, they who were blessed with the mystical company of Ares and Lucie Malfoy.

"Do I mistake or it is a dermatologic matter?" dared Rigel Black, sneering in an interlude they called _playing_.

"It is a cultural story, long and much discussed, my friend," Ares Malfoy sighed sadly, "where there is no skin to come out clean."

Riddle turned his head toward the Slytherin Prefect and the Black Heir: he understood neither about whom they were talking nor where they wanted to come.

"If it doesn't bother you," Riddle began with affected and mocking politeness, "could I know about this question?"

Black merely pointed out the Ravenclaw table, reign of a polite chatter of erudite minds, far from the ignorance ruling the world –at least they thought so.

Thomas M. Riddle saw some boys talking, a blonde girl with a beaming beauty sipping from a fine goblet, without touching food, and in the end he located the culprit: Isoke Glenn, fifth year student, coming from United States of America.

The young boy breathed the humid air and shook his head: he would like to reply that refined Mr Malfoy, Slytherin Prefect with blood purer than mountain spring water, was doing the same rude and superficial remarks of a drunk Muggle miner. But he kept silent, because he himself didn't like Ms Glenn from Ravenclaw.

Isoke was the third of eight children living in New York, and from what Thomas M. Riddle had heard, she was the first Black girl to cross Hogwarts's gates.

The Wizarding press had had a ball with the news: outraged headlines against Headmaster Dipped's serene and welcomed decision to teach a Negress rained down like snowflakes at Christmas Eve.

When Isoke Glenn had been sorted, Thomas M. Riddle was still a prisoner to the charity Orphanage. But in those two years, the girl didn't benefit of her schoolmates' resignation and her stubborn pride, her absurd claim to eat at the same table with Countess Von Tessel and Duchess Winsdor created a stir.

Isoke was the human kind's dregs, a lower being because she descended from an enslaved race kept in the darkest and cruellest ignorance and for long centuries oppressed by the ancestor of who now stretched a hand to help them, but careful to not get dirty with reality's filthy aspect.

"I think she's dangerous," Thomas M. Riddle said unaware.

Rigel Black looked surprised. "Why?"

The Slytherin boy didn't reply to avoid new and tiring questions.

Isoke Glenn was or appeared arrogant and proud of her origins, because only in that way she would have been able to achieve her ends: take revenge on the race that had made her a miserable slave, who could be raped, killed or sold like a rag doll.

Isoke Glenn was beautiful, even more than the Duchess with her tinkling jewellers. Isoke stood out for her manners' inborn grace, her bold but graceful pace, as if her feet barely touched the ground and without causing the heels' symphony her schoolmates loved so much. She was tall, almost as a boy, but her figure was blooming, flourishing but fresh, naïve and naughty like her eyes that never lowered, neither at the most obscene insults.

Rigel Black was sure that a Negress couldn't be pure, or rather; her pureness wasn't comparable to the earnest girls' one. Black women were used to gave themselves by force or gold from oblivious times, and so it was useless wonder if Isoke Glenn brought or not shame to Rowena Ravenclaw's House, she couldn't do in a different way: she was born with such tendency in her own blood.

Thomas M. Riddle watched her as she chewed decorously; the cutlery held in her dark fingers ornate with thin rings. The Prefect reproached her because of her slowness, but it was clear that that was a simple excuse to humiliate her in public.

"Do you know that the Negress risks cleaning the lavatories since next century?" Goyle asked, in his daily show of style.

"It is in the world's order," Ares Malfoy said.

"No, that… woman went too far!" Lucie cut in, twitching her hands in a hysterical spasm. "She handed a copied Charms' essay… at the beginning Glenn was rewarded with a high grade, but truth came to light."

"If she was sharp she would have changed some adverbs and adjectives and she would be safe: stupidity have to be punished," replied Thomas M. Riddle.

Lucie went on, boosted by general curiosity. "The Negress tried to ward off suspects, but the teacher isn't a stupid: when Countess Von Tessel accused her before the whole class to have stolen her notes, in order to strut with her own people, her trick was as clear as the sun!"

Ares nodded omnisciently. "Slytherin won't exult, because the teacher didn't take off points to Ravenclaw, but I do agree: the Negress belongs to her people, I hope she'll go back among them.

"She has ruined enough both school and magic with her rituals of primitive shaman," he added.

"She should have accepted the Headmaster's offer of a lighter plan of studies." Rigel said. "We are unable to understand the trouble that negroes face reading a common schoolbook, learning how write properly, submitting to basic rule, which we are used to. That is why the Negress is so tense."

"She isn't chained to her bed, there are schools for them!" Lucie snapped. "If her mind isn't suitable to school subjects, why does she have to resort to such low means?"

"My dear," Black explained patiently, "recent studies of Mediwizards and Healers have demonstrated how the population at issue is used to fraud and games of chances, and to moral decadence.

"I'll say it again: we can't judge them, we have to understand them, without expecting them to adapt to our civilization."

The Malfoys agreed generously.

Isoke Glenn ended her meal and went away; no one talked to her and they pretended to not notice her inconvenient presence, but they spied her and Isoke didn't care of them.

Thomas M. Riddle sat at a desk in the Common Room: the third year was very demanding, often the afternoon faded into evening and the sun had jet set when he finished his homework.

"Riddle, you can take my star chart," Fides said quietly, "I can't draw, but Ally told me the planets' names, so they are right.

In the meanwhile I'll read your Transfiguration essay."

Thomas M. Riddle didn't opposed but it seemed weird, bizarre, almost shameful that Countess Von Tessel had accused Isoke Glenn o a very common habit: everybody used to take somebody else's notes. It was as spontaneous as going to sleep at night, like hiding biscuits to not let others eat them. It was an unwritten rule.

Isoke Glenn was a lone and discreet girl, he had never saw her with a classmate, at the most the Prefects brought her back in their Common Room with harsh words.

She was accused to stink, despite she washed herself every day, and she was forced to hide her frizzy hair in a bun, because it was considered vulgar and anaesthetic.

Wizards had the same dull opinions of Muggles, of nuns talking about pagans, of they who banished whom weren't born from what they knew and appreciated.

Muggles appreciated themselves, Christian worshipped their modesty, wizards like the Malfoys their family and Isoke Glenn was the breeze of a new Era, of pagan rituals, of the knowledge that beyond sense, beyond magic, every one was worth to show his soul, which was a face of Universe. Isoke Glenn wasn't a stupid and lower Negress: she was a girl different from Countess Von Tessel.

Thomas M. Riddle wasn't able to explain why he felt affinities between the Negress's condition and his own, an orphan Slytherin.

The boy lost himself in other thoughts, the approaching Transfiguration test distressed him: he stayed up late into the night with Black's company, who wanted to write to his father. He got up early, wanting to finish his homework and he didn't remember Isoke Glenn until he saw her.

She walked with her head held high toward Charms' classroom, holding her book to her chest, her shirt's cuffs were perfectly ironed, and her robes brushed against the wall.

"Here she is, the Negress," Goyle said disgusted.

Thomas M. Riddle turned, embarrassed as if he had just been pointed by those gossipy and haughty wizards.

Isoke Glenn didn't look at them, severe and proud, knowing that she had nothing to be ashamed of, even, she knew to have the truth in her hands, among the books she studied and her own conscience ordered her to not lower at Countess Von Tessel's level. Thomas M. Riddle knew it.

A roll of parchment slipped on the marble floor with a soft thud, followed by a brief rolling.

Thomas M. Riddle knelt down; he grabbed the thin parchment and stood up.

"Excuse me, Miss, but you have lost this," he called her politely.

Isoke frowned puzzled, she was almost afraid that the Slytherin wanted to humiliate her, but the boy was just handing her the roll.

"Thank you," she whispered taking the object.

"You are welcome. Have a nice day, Miss," Thomas M. Riddle said with a nod.


End file.
